{"id":280,"date":"2014-10-19T13:15:51","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T17:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/?p=280"},"modified":"2014-11-02T11:15:33","modified_gmt":"2014-11-02T16:15:33","slug":"what-is-psychological-trauma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/19\/what-is-psychological-trauma\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Psychological Trauma?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter One of “You Can’t Just Snap Out Of It” available on amazon here<\/a>.<\/em> Get the amazon kindle version free here<\/a> for a limited time!<\/p>\n

Trauma occurs when you experience a life-threatening event to yourself or someone close to you, accompanied by intense fear, horror or helplessness (as defined by the American Psychiatric Association). Trauma can leave an indelible imprint on the brain.<\/p>\n

For example, if you look at the brain scans of some traumatized individuals, you can see shrinkage of brain regions\u2014such as the hippocampus\u2014that are involved in memory, or a failure in brain areas\u2014like the frontal cortex\u2014that are supposed to turn off the fear response. What you can\u2019t see, but what is equally important, is what that trauma does to the survivor\u2019s self-image. How a person feels, how he perceives himself and the world can be dramatically altered after a traumatic experience.<\/p>\n

Although trauma can wreak havoc on the brain and the psyche of individuals, as we will show in this book, IT DOESN\u2019T HAVE TO<\/strong>. Whether trauma has these devastating effects or not depends on how we deal with it\u2014or more precisely, how we don\u2019t deal with it.<\/p>\n

One of the things that surprises me most is how poorly many professionals and lay people advise trauma victims. Despite the fact that we now have a large body of research literature on the disease, trauma victims are regularly told to do the opposite of what my research and the research of others shows to be effective. In a variety of ways, victims are told to \u201cjust get over it,\u201d to \u201cput it behind them,\u201d to \u201csnap out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As my work demonstrates, you can\u2019t just \u201cget over it\u201d because trauma can change the parts of the brain involved in memory, which can then result in those traumatic memories playing over and over again. As a result of this change, you can\u2019t just stop the memories of your own free will.<\/p>\n

However, although I know as a researcher that the brain can\u2019t just get over it, as a trauma survivor and a clinician, I know only too well the impulse to tell oneself and others to block it out, to move beyond it. There\u2019s something deeply human about the desire to not face the pain, to believe the old adage \u201cout of sight, out of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n